Tag Archives: 2014

Big Hero 6  (2014)    70/100

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Rating :   70/100                                                                     102 Min        PG

The latest Disney animated feature film is set in the near future in the fictional San Fransokyo, an impression of what San Francisco might be like if it were in Japan (unless they have gone all ‘Watchmen’ on the story and Japan won World War II, this is not elaborated on) which has allowed the illustrators to tinker with a more Japanese style of animation for various elements in the film (alas, no easily discernible hentai on display). It’s based on the little known Marvel comic of the same name, which Disney is at liberty to adapt having bought over Marvel some years ago now and in fact there are a number of elements similar to the character of Iron Man which are a little distracting, but again they don’t have to worry about encroaching on copyright. It’s a bit of a departure for Disney in many ways as their productions are often marked by their originality, whereas here it is a fairly familiar superhero set-up, admittedly with extremely finessed graphical work.

Hiro (Ryan Potter) is a young tech aficionado whose parents passed away in a tragic accident. His brother creates a medical robot, Baymax (Scott Adsit), who becomes Hiro’s closest friend and adventuring companion when a mysterious fire not only destroys his world changing microbots he had been working on, but also sadly claims the life of his brother as well. Baymax has a bulky frame but one created largely via an inflatable exterior, thus differing from all other big-screen mechanoids, and he brings much needed light relief to the film as the duo are accidentally flung into investigating what really happened on that fateful day.

On his journey of self discovery Hiro will have to question his own feelings of rage, as well as what role other people should play in his life – the other engineers from his brother’s lab are concerned about his welfare but he initially keeps them at a distance, for example. All of these elements are resolved and delivered in a fairly two dimensional way, but there is action aplenty and it all looks and feels fresh enough to entertain even if it is going to appeal in a grander way to a younger demographic rather than adults. Maya Rudolph, Jamie Chung, Alan Tudyk and James Cromwell (as Professor Callaghan – a reference to Harry Callaghan, aka ‘Dirty’ Harry, San Francisco’s very own urban diplomacy expert) are the most recognisable names in the supporting line-up and, as you might imagine, there are Easter eggs galore to spot throughout the film.

Into the Woods  (2014)    54/100

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Rating :   54/100                                                                     125 Min        PG

A musical that is so forced it’s painful. This is the Disney film interpretation of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway show, adapted for the screen by Lapine and directed by Rob Marshall (‘Chicago’ 02, ‘Nine’ 09), which sees several of the Grimms’ fairy tales (specifically Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel; with a random witch, two prince charmings, and the baker and his wife thrown in for structural cement) woven together in the most pointless and dull way imaginable – the baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) have to go ‘into the woods’ to fetch various items for the witch to lift a curse, which is where they will meet everyone else – all of whom are busying themselves with their normal respective stories.

Not much time ever passes between each song and not much variation exists between them either – each registers no differently than someone banging, strumming or blowing repetitively and inarticulately on the instrument of choice for the number whilst someone sings over it in a similarly predictable, and achingly dull, crescendo of ever higher but constantly monotone pitches. In fact, the musicality of the film has as much originality and merit as the script does. Eventually things stop going according to plan and the film becomes a little darker, at the time I was thinking ‘noooooooo! I thought this was about to finish!’, but actually this section (about the last half an hour or so) is way more interesting than the rest of the film, but even this part is a watered down and much weaker version of what happens in the stage show.

Also starring Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Johnny Depp, Lilla Crawford and Daniel Huttlestone – who played Gavroche in ‘Les Mis‘, a film which this is clearly trying to ape with its similar production design and cinematography but which in this context doesn’t do the film any favours as it’s way too devoid of light, leaving large sections feeling overly drab and reflective of the somewhat pointless story. Streep is up for a supporting Oscar for this but it’s really not deserved – she has her moments but there are precious few of them and even her main song has a hiccup or two with the recording (for the vast majority of the film the cast were not recorded live, unlike Les Mis). Emily Blunt is significantly better, and at least deservedly got a Golden Globe nomination for her performance, finally losing out to Amy Adams for ‘Big Eyes‘.

Son of a Gun  (2014)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                     108 Min        15

Eminently watchable and oddly enjoyable crime thriller, made so by an extremely strong performance from Ewan McGregor revelling in his role as hardened convict Brendan Lynch who is about to recruit a new member into his gang whilst they serve time together, before attempting to break out and score it big. He is also clearly enjoying being able to bring his natural Scottish accent to the fore for a change, indeed there are moments that harken back to the work in his early career with the likes of ‘Shallow Grave’ (94) and ‘Trainspotting’ (96). It’s an Australian film from writer and director Julius Avery (his first feature film after various shorts), and the new blood in question is played by Brenton Thwaites, with support from Alicia Vikander sporting a fairly ropey Polish accent – both the youngsters are pretty annoying, but this actually aids the film as it feels real for their characters and there is no special attempt to portray them as anything other than themselves, they are not the ‘heroes’ of the piece for example, whilst McGregor vents audience frustration and grounds the film by also losing his rag with them at several key points. Good, gritty fun.

American Sniper  (2014)    76/100

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Rating :   76/100                                                                      132 Min       15

Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial effort has replicated the success of many of its predecessors by finding its way into the Oscars race (best film and best actor for Bradley Cooper), this time around though it has been beleaguered by controversy over its portrayal of both the war in Iraq following nine eleven and also the accuracy of the depiction of real life central character Chris Kyle, the titular American sniper and indeed the most successful one in US history going by his number of kills. I don’t think the naysayers are in this case justified – I fail to see how anyone can view the film as anything other than a very strong statement against war in general, and as for the content and the focus on one side of the conflict, well, there is a pretty big clue in the title as to what one can expect from the plot.

Oddly enough, there is no back story to any of the reputed 255 kills that we see Kyle ratchet up and many of the details to do with individual events are inventions or elaborations, though nothing that doesn’t fit with the setting, and throughout the movie there is a narrative following an enemy sniper which is purely to make the story more engaging, although the sniper himself did exist. These changes work well, the film is genuinely quite exciting in some places – evoking similarities between it and ‘Zero Dark Thirty‘, and the license taken doesn’t interfere with the central concepts of what the condition of war in general is like to fight through and what the lasting effects can be for the combatants (civilians and the wider political context are very much not the focus here). The elements of jingoism are to be utterly expected, we are after all watching men going in to a war zone where their lives are guaranteed to be in jeopardy. Some of the editing is more reminiscent of the kind of way a traditional action film might be put together, but it’s the mere tiniest distraction from the seriousness of the film.

Where the film does fall down, however, is with the role of the ‘weepy moaning wife’ left behind whilst her husband endures hell. Sienna Miller has the rather joyless task of playing the part and although it certainly makes sense that she would be concerned for her husband and want him to stop returning to the war zone, she is just relentless from even before they have had their first date. She is about as stereotyped as they come and bemoaning how terrible soldiers are for potential mates doesn’t apparently stop her from eagerly bedding, tying the knot with and then opening her oven door for them, not to mention then living off their pay check. Nonetheless, this is a well made and powerful film – one that very unusually deliberately invites you to look up more about its central character, and Cooper is great in delivering a performance that one can very easily imagine as typifying the attitudes and experiences of many young American men signing up for the army. He even manages to convey that perhaps Kyle may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed at times, assuming this was deliberate of course ….

Wild  (2014)    35/100

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Rating :   35/100                                                                     115 Min        15

A film that wavers all over the place as to its own merit, in particular the believability and credibility of the central character Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) who embarks on a solo trek along the Pacific Crest Trail that runs up the western mountains of America (on average, 200 km in from the Pacific coast) all the way from the Mexican to the Canadian border. Set in 1995, it is actually based on Strayed’s 2012 memoir ‘Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail’, but the beginning shows us Witherspoon rolling around on the floor in a vain attempt to get off the ground with her pack on, forcing us to sincerely question the premise that she is then going to traverse thousands of kilometres on foot by herself. It’s not only preposterous, but dangerous – every year people are killed going on adventures or hill walking by dire luck but tragically sometimes also thanks to their own poor preparation, and the constant undertow to this film is that she has to suffer a bit but her gutsy determination as a woman is all she needs to conquer all and eventually overturn the darkness of her previous life to go on and be fruitful. In reality, it’s amazing she isn’t bird food after a mere week.

A wonderful moment to sum this up is when A MAN advises her to take extra water with her due to the heat. Seeming to take offence at this guy’s arrogance in assuming she doesn’t have a clue she ignores him, and then thinks ‘fuck it’ as she’s walking and needlessly downs her remaining water – sloshing the last of it over her face and hair for no real reason, before realising the tank to get a refill is empty. It is completely impossible to feel sorry for her. At this moment she meets two men one of whom will, naturally since he’s male, suggest he is going to try and rape her, and is only prevented from doing so by the chance return of his mate.

Although it is of course possible the event occurred exactly like this, it also fits the whole sinister agenda throughout the film (the film is directed and written by men I should point out – Jean-Marc Vallée and Nick Hornby respectively), if she had been raped here it would have been a terrible advertisement for walking the P.C.T. but merely suggesting it avoids this whilst adding drama and showing that most men are pigs, and yet she seems more than happy to spread her legs for anyone whom she likes the look of or who is willing to offer her drugs. Indeed, if she isn’t banging them, then they are trying to sexually molest her – even her father is shown to be a villain in flashback by putting his fist up to her face as a child and asking if she wants ‘a knuckle sandwich’ – and that’s it, that is the complete summation of his character, with no mention whatsoever of the stepfather she then had for many years including during the period that her mother (played by Laura Dern) was sick, and it seems they even changed her lung cancer to spinal, no doubt in an effort to make it seem ‘so unfair’ when possibly her mother was a heavy smoker (could be she wasn’t a smoker of course, but then why else change it).

In fact, the film begins to redeem itself a little when we see, during several more fast cut and reasonably irritating flashback sequences, that she was until recently a junkie, albeit one who never really seems to have any withdrawal symptoms, and we think ‘ah, OK, she is an idiot, that explains and justifies her borderline suicidal adventure’, but then it flips things once more, by showing us she simply went off the rails for a while, slutting herself around town and doing heroin in response to her mother passing away, all behind the back of her loving husband. Regarding her travelling escapade she at one point remarks ‘well, it’s more difficult for us women as we have children and parents to look after’ – erm, what?? I have to offer the disclaimer that feminism has had many great and important triumphs for the equality of the sexes, but there is an ever growing strong and nasty postmodern element that has evolved and which seems to grant women equal status in all things with the one hand, and then with the other it absolves women from responsibility for their own actions – indeed, it was recently announced on the BBC that there are plans in the works for no less than fifty percent of female prisoners in the UK to be released, because …. they’re female!!!

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing – if they have come up with a better, more progressive system than imprisonment to rehabilitate offenders then great, but it should damn well be applied to men and women for Christ’s sake, and this film buys in to that whole sexist garbage by showing the central character wonder, as she begins to resuscitate her life, that maybe all the random sex and drugs and all the pain she caused her friends and family was perhaps in the end a good thing because it led her to where she is now – the complete and utter avoidance of any accountability for her actions. That’s like saying the Holocaust and the Second World War was a good thing because we got lots of new technology and the United Nations out of it. Witherspoon is good in the role for what it is, and she’s been nominated at the Academy Awards but I really hope she doesn’t get the Oscar, you can’t avoid the feeling that it’s due to who she is and a ‘triumphant leading female role’ – which when you look at in detail it really isn’t, although she does get her tits out a few times and the Academy does seem to love that.

It’s also true to say that without the seemingly uncredited help of several males in the film Cheryl would have perished many times over – including before the trek as it’s her then poor husband, who could easily have been riddled by all manner of venereal disease by this point, that forcibly rescues her from the drug dens she was frequenting. It wouldn’t be in the least surprising if she gave him a hard time about it for ‘interfering’, or ‘not wanting her to have a good time’ – reportedly Witherspoon’s production company Pacific Standard optioned this for film months before the book was even published, perhaps suggesting familiarity with Strayed’s writing or, rather more cynically, opportunism for the kind of story that can easily be spun into awards bait in a market that rarely stops to question the validity of anything with a ‘strong female lead’. Maybe the real story is an inspiring and fascinating one, but the Devil is in the detail and decent acting and cinematography are not enough to mask the many faults in this overtly pernicious adaptation.

A Most Violent Year  (2014)    74/100

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Rating :   74/100                                                                     125 Min        15

Given the title, this is not nearly as violent as one might expect (it is still violent, but predominantly in an atmospheric way rather than a graphic one). Even more surprisingly, there is a whopping amount of philosophy in this – really good thought provoking philosophy as well which slightly goes against the grain for mainstream crime dramas on the big-screen. The plot revolves around Oscar Isaac’s Abel Morales, who runs a fuel delivery company in NYC in the early eighties and whose rivals would dearly love to see him out of business. He and his family are threatened, his drivers are assaulted, his shipments are stolen, and the authorities are investigating him and his company for alleged dodgy practices, but he attempts to stoically remain true to his guiding principles – refusing to arm his employees, for example, looking two steps ahead at the potential consequences and teaching them that the men who attack them with weapons are nothing more than cowards for doing so.

Those around him, however, including Jessica Chastain as his wife and Albert Brooks as his business partner, are not so keen on philosophy when the going gets tough. Written and directed by J. C. Chandor (‘All is Lost’ 13, ‘Margin Call’ 11) it’s a strong performance from Chastain and a really great turn from Isaac, who utterly convinces and gains our sympathy bar a brief moment with his wife that almost doesn’t ring true, and this is a movie that may survive and even merit more than one viewing despite its slightly difficult and grim premise. One plot point involving a salesman working for Abel ultimately feels a little loose, but it’s a small niggle and one easy to forget about in an otherwise great film.

Testament of Youth  (2014)    0/100

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Rating :   0/100             COMPLETE INCINERATION           129 Min        12A

Aaaargh what a load of garbage! A film about stupid posh people who go off to war excited about potentially killing themselves and who then try to moan about it poignantly, completely ignoring their own idiocy and the fact that it was their very ilk who were not only responsible for starting the blooming war in the first place, but for then buying their way into the ranks of the officer elite and, once again through their stupidity, sending many thousands of men who didn’t have a choice about being there to their pointless and horrible deaths, all told through the eyes of the most pathetic useless waify twat that you can imagine. The waify twat in question is Vera Brittain, whose autobiographical novel this is based on, and World War I is the society event of the day. Vera is a woman, and is therefore much put upon and oppressed – as we can tell in the very beginning when daddy, and this did bring a tear to my eye, buys her a piano when she didn’t want one and she flips out, proving she’s an ungrateful spoilt little pisser right from the word go.

This upset at the piano is all to do with money going on something that everyone can use rather than sending her to Oxford to study, but she is apparently used to getting her own way so daddy eventually pays up anyway. Whilst we are waiting for the terribly exciting decision from the uni (even though she forgot to check what was required for the entrance exam and cocked it up and yet her entry is a forgone conclusion anyway) we are to believe that she is somehow a talented and spirited exception that is fighting the good fight for women’s lib, which is a massive bastardisation of the social issues of the day – women attended university in Britain long before 1914 (officially British universities have been open to women since 1876) and I imagine if you were male or female and, say, from the sticks around Birmingham you may have had much more difficulty getting into Oxford then than a young lass from gentrified money. So she’s really clever and talented right? So clever, in fact, she convinces her father to send her brother off to the war as ‘it will be good for him’, ahaha ha ha. Really? You’ve somehow got into Oxford and yet the poorest uneducated homeless orphan on the street can easily tell you that going off to any war is unlikely to be ‘good for you’.

At some point in the near future she realise this may have been a mistake and so she tries to get out of her studies to ‘do her bit’ as a nurse – to which her superior quite rightly points out that this is treating her place at the university with quite considerable disdain and she shouldn’t squander the privilege to go and do something she’s not trained at and will make no real difference in so doing either. She does it anyway and we see many, many shots of other nurses running around trying to save people whilst she looks hopelessly around aghast at the horrors she is surrounded by. Over the years, though, she remains unremittingly aghast, perpetually doing the better part of nothing – even Scarlett O’Hara did a better job of getting her hands dirty when she had to. The drama is unveiled in a horrendously melodramatic way that is so painfully bad I simply refuse to believe any of it is based on anything other than the most rudimentary of facts.

As for the acting, it is universally terrible – in particular from Alicia Vikander, who plays Brittain, and Kit Harington who plays her love interest and who initially has a job at the back somewhere but then volunteers for the front. Bright lad, you can see why the pair fell for each other. Directed by James Kent, it is also perforated by long almost completely silent shots and if you are going to make a film in this manner then you absolutely have to know what you are doing, otherwise not only does it seem utterly pretentious but you simply create many awkward moments for all but a solo audience. This really couldn’t paint a more negative portrayal of Brittain, which is sad as this is also the first big-screen adaptation of her most famous literary work, first published in 1933 and eventually forming part of an ongoing memoir that she was still writing for when she passed away in 1970.

Whiplash  (2014)    72/100

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Rating :   72/100                                                                     107 Min        15

Another best film contender at this year’s Oscars, ‘Whiplash’ is the up-close and intense story of one music teacher’s bullying of his students in an effort to drive them to greatness. Determined potential drumming prodigy Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) is numero uno on the list of students to break, and J.K.Simmons is abrasively and brutally brilliant as the demonic instructor hell bent on validating himself through ‘discovery’ of talent, whose determination is no doubt driven relentlessly on by his seeming failure to uncover any diamonds in the rough so far in his career, thus he feeds his own sadistic cruelty quite convinced the pain and suffering he causes is justified.

Teller is miles (ahaha) better in this than in anything I’ve seen him in so far (see ‘That Awkward Moment‘), and since it is him drumming (albeit with a lot of great editing from Tom Cross: the film’s solo, for example, took two days to film) he deserves a lot of credit, as does Nate Lang, who plays one of his competitors, for training him (Lang spent months tutoring him in the discipline of jazz drumming, differing considerably from his previous tenure drumming for both a church youth group and his band ‘The Mutes’ in high school). Teller, though, doesn’t yet have the emotional range to fully light up the film, to really, really make us feel for him.

It may perhaps seem a little too far fetched, that Simmon’s Terence Fletcher has been exaggerated beyond what would simply be allowed anywhere, but it’s partly based on writer/director Damien Chazelle’s own time in a jazz band (whose previous writing credits oddly include ‘The Last Exorcism Part II‘) and in The Red Dragon’s experience it’s bang on, and reminded him perfectly of one individual who was so despotic that he received bodily threats from concerned parents and yet who was still allowed to continue teaching unabated, resulting in a mass exodus of distressed and scarred students. No doubt many in the classical music industry will see similar shades of someone from their own past, or present …

Foxcatcher  (2014)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                     129 Min        15

A finely acted and yet supremely depressing true story about Olympic wrestlers Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) and David Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) and their coach Jean du Pont (Steve Carell), who describes himself as one of the richest men in America at the time and who takes on Mark as a way to engage with the sport that he loves but which he has never competed in himself, we are led to conclude that this is largely because his mother (Vanessa Redgrave) very much looks down on the activity as a ‘lowly’ sport. He’s not much of a coach, his body and mannerisms are more like Monty Burns from the Simpsons than anything resembling an athlete or a figure of authority and respect, and the story focuses on the psychological effects of a lifetime spent futilely trying to please an aloof parent, a situation complicated by wealth and indulgent privilege, as well as Mark’s situation growing up and competing in the shadow of his, loving, brother David.

The first thing you notice about the film is the altered physical aspect that all three central performers have sewn into their portrayals – in fact, the three all hunch to some extent, two of them from muscular strengthening and combat, the other via atrophy, but their look and style are all very well nuanced and delivered. Indeed, for Carell this is not only a rare non-comedic role but an extremely transformative one with prosthetics and a deserved Oscar nod for his lonely and fractious study of du Pont – with Ruffalo getting an equally merited supporting nomination although Tatum is every bit their equal. Set in the eighties and directed by Bennett Miller (‘Capote’ 05, ‘Moneyball’ 11), a slightly grainy texture has been applied to the film, which I think is to the movie’s detraction – it is already somewhat dark and miserable without a further visible layer being applied, but it remains a taught and very believable exploration of the themes and characters, and the real story both intrigues and saddens throughout.

The Theory of Everything  (2014)    75/100

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Rating :   75/100                                                                     123 Min        12A

Eddie Redmayne annoyed me intensely throughout ‘Les Miserables‘, but I have to admit he is very good in this as the talented and cruelly fated cosmologist Stephen Hawking who developed motor neuron disease when he was just 21, and for once Redmayne does put his hair down for the role (it would have been most amusing had he not done so). It’s an extremely sad story and so the physicality of what happens to the main character necessarily takes up around half of the film’s focus as the disease slowly destroys his ability to use all of the muscles in his body, with the other half zoning in on Hawking’s relationship with his wife Jane (Felicity Jones) from when they meet at Cambridge in 1963 until more or less the present day, in fact the screenplay is based on her memoir ‘Travelling to Infinity – My Life with Stephen’ published in 2008.

The title refers to the ongoing search in physics for a unifying equation that will cover all of the fundamental forces of nature and will bring quantum mechanics and general relativity into harmony with one another, as currently they don’t completely work together suggesting something is wrong with at least one of them somewhere. What is actually more fascinating than the physics (the film doesn’t really delve too deeply into the science involved) is the effect on the marital relations of the Hawkings of other people being introduced into their interpersonal space, and one could easily put the disability issue to one side and extrapolate similar effects for any relationship, and perhaps argue for a more general equation surrounding this type of natural force. Redmayne and Jones are both up for awards – in fact Redmayne has already won the Golden Globe so he may be running as the most serious contender to ‘Birdman’s‘ Micheal Keaton for the Oscar. Despite the seriousness of the film and a story that is quite painful to watch, this is nonetheless a wonderful and heartfelt biography from director James Marsh (‘Shadow Dancer‘, ‘Man on Wire’ 08).